


Skulduggery Pleasant Drabble Dump

by Lilboppaloola



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Fandom
Genre: F/M, This is just gonna be the dumping ground for drabbles, the rest is anyone's guess, there will be valdug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 14:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15731604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilboppaloola/pseuds/Lilboppaloola
Summary: Literally just drabbles that come to me that I won't use as part of one shots or bigger wips. Expect some quality work lol.





	1. Chapter 1

Skulduggery now has a room full of pictures, she notes. Which is actually just his piano room, come to mention it. Except the last time that Valkyrie was in here, months before Devastation Day, the walls were bare paint and there was just an instrument in the centre.

 

Now, around five years later, she looks around and sees Ghastly working on a suit in his shop, Tanith upside down chatting with Fletcher, Anton Shudder turned away from the camera behind the reception desk of the Midnight Hotel. It's a tribute to their friends, living and dead, she realises. Like the new Sanctuary's Hall of Rememberance, but far less flashy. Glancing around the room, Valkyrie picks out faces she's gotten to know over the years as well as others with which she's less familiar.

 

But most of all she sees herself.

 

Valkyrie, mid-kick in the training room; Valkyrie, perched on dusty red rocks, looking out over what she remembers to be the Grand Canyon when she was 14; Valkyrie, grinning right at the camera as she struck a pose on the end of Haggard pier as the sun set behind her one evening.

 

In amongst all the photos, old ones of the Dead Men in sepia, some remastered and some cracked with age, there are even a few drawings. One, of three men sat around a campfire, catches her eye and she knows immediately who she's seeing. Saracen Rue sits on the right, leaning back on one arm. The middle man looks boyish and even in sketch form Valkyrie can guess that he was Larrikin, long ago, just from the freckles.  
But the man on the left, the man with high cheekbones and crinkles around his smiling eyes, is unmistakable. To her, at least. Funny, she never would have guessed his hair was curly, but it suited him well enough.

 

There's a liveliness to Skulduggery here, ripped away long before Valkyrie had met him, that the artist had managed to capture just so. Even so, what was gone had not been lost forever. It was in the tilt of his head, the softness of his eyeless gaze, all visible when she looks at the largest picture on the wall: The two of them, smiling at one another, shoulders only inches apart, while an unseen Dexter Vex had captured the moment forever.


	2. Definitely Just Friends

When Valkyrie had told her mother that there was nothing going on between her and Skulduggery, it hadn't been a lie. Not really.

When Melissa Edgley had walked into her kitchen to find her daughter in the arms of a skeleton, face pressed into the side of his neck, breathing him in.... Well. That had been a friendly hug. A hug. Between friends. Because Valkyrie had been upset, and her best friend had been comforting her, that's all. Nothing more.

And it was the truth, mostly, so long as you didn't count the unspoken sexual tension that hung heavy like fog between the two of them, and Valkyrie sure wasn't going to.

So when they both finally admitted that, actually, there would never be anyone else for either of them but the other and spent months' worth of family dinners sitting shoulder to shoulder and holding hands under the table... No one said a word to question them, and Valkyrie had been rather pleased with the quiet way their relationship was playing out around her parents.

Except now, there was an engagement ring banded around the finger of her left hand that seemed to be growing heavier and heavier with every step she took up the garden path to the Edgley household's front door. It trapped her in a mess of her own making with no way out, and Valkyrie was not looking forward to picking up the pieces on this one. Especially not when she had a damn wedding to plan at the same time.

Any and all plans skipped away back to where the Bentley sat in the driveway when Melissa Edgley opened the front door  and the first words out of her mouth were: "What the hell is that?!"

Skulduggery coughed to cover a chuckle beside her and Valkyrie resisted the urge to punch her fiancé.

This one was going to take a lot of explanation, and she wasn't sure that even Skulduggery's charms would be enough to talk his way out of a slap.

They weren't.


	3. Lighting the Fire

Val does ballet as part of her core strength training until she's 14 and Skulduggery disappears. After that, she sort of forgets about it (for obvious reasons), and just never goes back to it. There are more important things to master, things that will keep her alive longer in a fight, especially when Tanith goes rogue.

Later, on the better days in Colorado, she starts stretching again. By this point her flexibility is like half of what it used to be, but she sticks with it, throwing in some pliés and mostly just hoping her lines are straight because she still can't bear to look in a mirror even now.

By the time she's finally ready to come home, she's practising at least every other day, depression permitting. Every time she's left fighting for breath, music ringing in her ears and hair falling in her eyes, it's another battle won. Every leap; she's weightless, and she's winning.

When Skulduggery walks in on her turning fouettés around the cleared space in Gordon's upstairs gym, she finally admits that it's her strongest method of staying in control. Every second she spends focusing on angles and turnouts and bending, reaching, further, lines, is a second she's not thinking about her little sister laying dead in her arms, or Skulduggery walking away from her towards the Accelerator, or watching through Darquesse's eyes as she tears people apart.

There's still no mirror, but she lets him watch from time to time. When his hands reach out to tweak her arm line one day, she lets him do that, too. He doesn't know anything about dancing. Not outside of the ballroom, anyway. Still, he becomes a regular presence in the "studio" all the same.

The unspoken between them is how much life it's sparking in them both, watching the light flicker behind her eyes once again.


	4. A Wise Old Woman Once Said

Valkyrie was ushered into the Supreme Mage's private chamber by a harrassed-looking blonde woman with a clipboard. Walking in, she stared around at the lavish decor and shook her head before her gaze fixed on the figure of the most beautiful woman in the world herself, facing away.

"China." Valkyrie hesitated to continue after making her presence known.

"Ah." China turned to face her, smiling. "There it is."

Valkyrie stopped, nerves already waiting to topple her over the edge today. "What?"

China gestured, sweet smile still in place. "My dear Valkyrie, I've been waiting for this conversation."

Valkyrie's eyes narrowed. "You don't even know what I came here to say."

China arched a delicate eyebrow.

"Not, perhaps, that you are finally becoming tired of dancing around the truth about your emotions with a certain man and came here for my advice on how to handle him?"

Valkyrie just stood there looking stunned.

"Sit, sit, my dear. Have some tea; this may take a while."

China picked up the phone from a nearby table and dialled.

"Berresford? Clear my schedule for the next hour."

She listened to a response that Valkyrie couldn't hear and her lips pursed momentarily, releasing immediately before a frown even had the chance to marr her facial features. Her voice was cold.

"I don't care. They'll have to wait. It is /me/ they wish to meet."

And, with that, she replaced the phone on the hook with a delicate finality.

China turned to Valkyrie in a small flourish. Valkyrie felt minorly unsettled by how excited she looked.

"Shall we begin?"

**Author's Note:**

> I love writing China because she's such an enigma. You can kinda get away with some wild ooc moments because of it. She reminds me of Holt from B99 in that way when he drops out his hula hooping for fitness secret and it's so unbelievable and just never mentioned again.


End file.
